Riot Most Uncouth (6 page)

“Have the sodding thing, with my blessing,” said my father to the workman, and he threw his crystal glass against the side of the house. Then, to my mother: “Take the child away. I can't stand to look at it any longer, or listen to the sound of its mewling.”

At sunset, she brought my supper to my bedroom, and I ate it alone, as the governess had left several weeks earlier for want of pay. I did not see my father again that night, and when I awoke the next morning, he'd left us and fled the country. Had he stayed, he would have been imprisoned for his unpaid debts.

The castle at Gight, which had been Catherine's inheritance, went to my father's creditors. When she met Mad Jack, she was a wealthy heiress with a substantial income. Now, all that was gone. My mother was willing to give up everything for love, so love found her a match who was willing to take everything from her. My father, despite his other flaws, was not lacking in imagination, and he put his creative faculties to good use, devising new ways to spend money and accumulate debt. Once he'd stripped away her assets, my mother was no longer of any value to him.

Soon after he left, I heard he had died. There were rumors that he was murdered by the husband of his mistress. I never believed it, though. My father always said that only foolish men die. Whatever else he was, Mad Jack was no fool.

 

Chapter 8

I loved—but those I loved are gone;

Had friends—my early friends are fled:

How cheerless feels the heart alone,

When all its former hopes are dead!

Though gay companions o'er the bowl

Dispel awhile the sense of ill;

Though pleasure stirs the maddening soul,

The heart—the heart—is lonely still.

—
Lord Byron,
“I Would I Were a Careless Child”

When I returned to my residence, the man from London was waiting there for me.

“I am Sir Archibald Knifing,” said my new friend as I entered. Joe Murray looked irritated; it was his customary duty to introduce guests, and it was rude of Knifing to dispense with proper etiquette. But Knifing didn't seem like a man with much respect for protocol or much tolerance for inanities. He didn't seem like the kind of man one wants to meet when one has just lugged a heavy wooden chair up several flights of stairs after stealing it, either.

I shrugged off my greatcoat, which Joe Murray retrieved from the floor, and I pushed the throne against a wall in the parlor. I draped my body over the seat, trying to look as impressive as I could under the circumstances. My clothes and hair were damp and clingy.

Knifing remained almost unnaturally still as he watched me arrange myself. He had a sallow and waxy complexion; skin like that of an embalmed corpse, except for a puckered pink scar that sliced diagonally across his face, from the middle of his forehead, through his milky left eye, and down the side of his cheek. His clothing bore the hallmarks of the finest London tailors, but his suit was black, which was out of fashion for social calls during daylight hours, and so snug around his emaciated, cadaverous form that I was surprised the man could draw breath. In his hands, he held a wide-brimmed black rabbit-felt hat, and a long-handled umbrella hung by its curved handle from his forearm, though it had not been raining. Joe Murray would certainly have offered to take charge of such objects upon a guest's arrival. I assumed Knifing had refused to relinquish his accouterments, which was curious.

“Where did you get that?” he asked.

“Get what?” I asked in as nonchalant a manner as I could.

“The chair.”

“Oh,” I said. “I got it at the store.”

“What store?”

I knit my brow and let my mouth hang slack, in an expression of baffled innocence. “Well, the chair store. Obviously.”

He stared at me with his dead eye. “You don't have the furniture you purchase delivered to your residence?”

I paused. I should have recognized the flaw in my explanation. But I was a poet, and possessed of uncommon mental agility. “Vigorous exercise is beneficial to a gentleman's health,” I said.

He frowned and didn't say anything.

“So, Mr. Knifing, that's a fascinating name you've got,” I said, trying to control my heavy, ragged breathing. “Where does that come from? Is it Welsh?”

“I am here from London, at Lord Whippleby's considerable expense, to investigate the murder of his beloved daughter, Felicity,” he said, curtly ignoring my question.

“Is it ordinary for knights to be engaged in the investigation of crimes?”

The corner of his mouth twitched with irritation. “I don't concern myself with the ordinary,” he said.

“What should I call you, then? Sir Archie?”

“Mr. Knifing suits my purposes.”

“Very good, Mr. Knifing. You may refer to me as the Honorable George Gordon, Sixth Lord Byron.”

“I'd like to ask you some questions about the murder.”

“Leif Sedgewyck sent you, didn't he?” I asked. “He's the one who you should arrest.”

“I've spoken to Mr. Sedgewyck, and he told me about your strange preoccupation with this matter. I'm also aware of his interest in the decedent; an interest in her continuing to be alive. Angus the Constable mentioned you as well, and I'd like to know why you were loitering around my murder scene this morning.”

“I was feeling heroic, and thought I might catch the killer.”

“You don't catch killers,” Knifing said. “I catch killers.” As he said this, he pointed, for emphasis, at his concave chest.

“I see.” I decided not to explain to this gentleman that I was the world's most gifted poet and, thusly, skilled at nearly every intellectual pursuit. He'd learn this for himself, soon enough.

“Your intrusion into this matter is unwelcome. Now the task has fallen upon me to figure out whether you are merely a dilettante, or something more sinister.”

“I quite hope it's the latter,” I said.

“If it is, you'll have a date with the noose.”

I stuck a finger in my shirt collar. “That would be unpleasant.”

“Not for me,” he said. A tight-lipped smile creased Knifing's sepulchral features.

I leaned back against the velvet upholstery of the big chair. “Surely, you don't think I killed the girl?”

“You're as good a suspect as any. People tell me you made a crass and explicit sexual proposition to Felicity a couple of months ago, and responded with anger when she rejected you. Is that true?”

I rubbed my fingers across a carved armrest. “I don't recall.”

“Lying to me is a futile enterprise, Lord Byron. I'm difficult to deceive, and I'm smarter than you.”

I shifted my weight, and crossed my legs in what I thought was a rakish manner. “No, I mean, that probably happened. But I don't recall. I make crass sexual advances toward almost every woman I encounter, you see. Usually, when I've had a lot to drink.”

“You're often drunk?” His eyebrow arched, stretching that long, wicked scar as he regarded me with distaste.

I shook my finger at him. “I'm drunk right now, as it happens.”

“It's the middle of the afternoon, on a Tuesday.”

“Time is of little concern to me. I haven't slept in days.” For some reason, I was proud of this. “May I offer you some whisky?”

“Certainly not.” The furrows beneath his cheeks seemed to deepen.

“Very good.” I produced a silver flask from my waistcoat pocket and tipped it back. “More for me.”

“Are you telling me, then, that you had no particular animus toward this victim?”

“Until you told me, I was unaware I had ever met her. And I've no particular animus toward anyone. I'm quite peaceful.” I adjusted my position on the chair, because my gun was poking me in the back.

“If you're lying, I'll find out,” Knifing said.

I indulged in another nip from the flask. “You don't really believe I could have done this, do you?”

He rubbed his chin, pretending to think about it. “I'll tell you one thing. You've earned a fine reputation as a villain. There are plenty of thieftakers and bounty hunters I know who would send you up and collect the fee. It's a right good day's work.”

“You'd see me hanged to save yourself the trouble of doing your job?”

He smiled again, and I worried his face would crack from the strain. “I'd rather enjoy seeing you hanged, even if I had to keep the trouble.”

“But you won't accuse me of the crime?”

“For the moment, I don't intend to. You should understand, though, that I'm not sparing you because of any admirable qualities you possess, Lord Byron. As best I can tell, you have none. Your poetry is shit and your morals are abhorrent. And I'm not sparing you because I am especially ethical or fastidious about my work. I am satisfied with the arrest of a plausible suspect, in most cases. That's generally the best anyone can expect from men in my profession, and there's little profit in raising people's expectations.”

He took a couple of steps forward, so he was standing very close to me.

“You might think that men like me are in the business of uncovering truth or delivering justice,” he said. “We are not. The people who hire me have had their perception of safety upset by intrusion upon their rights, often by violence. They seek from me a catharsis; they want the disorder repaired. My job is to reaffirm the security of their position at the top of the roiling mass of civilization so that they can continue to live as they did before the disruption. My clients don't want me to deliver them further uncertainty, and I never disappoint the people who pay me. I don't think it's likely that you killed Felicity Whippleby, but I've got nobody better to accuse yet.”

“What about Sedgewyck?”

Knifing knew, of course, that I was pressing him for information. He considered the implications of bestowing some upon me, and seemed to decide that I presented no threat that required him to hold his tongue. “Angus the Constable likes him for the killer,” he said.

“What do you think?”

“Whatever Angus likes, I am inclined to take the opposite viewpoint,” Knifing said. “Angus is the sort of fellow who couldn't deduce the existence of his own arse-hole if he took off his trousers and sniffed at the brown stain in the seat of them. And I've other reasons to doubt Sedgewyck's guilt. Based on my investigation of the murder scene, I believe the culprit gained access to Felicity's dormitory through an open second-floor window, not a typical mode of entry for an invited guest. If the killer was not someone she knew, he may well be impossible to conclusively identify.”

“Well, what does it matter if Sedgewyck didn't kill her?” I said. “I didn't kill her either.”

“I don't care,” Knifing told me. “Sedgewyck has an influential father and a fortune to back his defense. You've got your family's name, which isn't as good as it once was, and the scant funds you can borrow. I will not return empty-handed to London, and if I arrest you, you will have great difficulty clearing yourself of the charges. Though your guilt seems unlikely, judges and juries prefer to see disorder corrected, just like my clients, and they'll convince themselves of an unlikelihood before they will tolerate an uncertainty. You are protected, for now, only by the fact that this killer is particular and identifiable in his method, and seems apt to strike again.”

“You mean that the killer's rumored blood-draining is an unusual hallmark?” I said.

“Yes. And if I were to accuse a prominent nobleman of this crime, and later on, another bloodless corpse turned up, there is a small chance my professional reputation might suffer some damage.” He straightened his cravat as he said this, tightening it until it crimped the flesh of his neck, letting me know he was a man who valued his honor.

“If you don't mind my saying so, I'd rather enjoy seeing you embarrassed,” I said. I took the opportunity to return his nasty leer.

“You'd have a fine view of my shame, while dangling from the gallows.”

 

Chapter 9

And thou art dead, as young and fair

As aught of mortal birth;

And form so soft, and charms so rare,

Too soon return'd to Earth!

—
Lord Byron,
“And thou art dead, as young and fair”

Distraught by my exchange with Archibald Knifing, I decided to return at once to the murder house. I found Angus the volunteer watchman still guarding the front door.

“What do you want, Lord Byron?” he asked.

“I have spoken to Archibald Knifing,” I said. “I am concerned he may intend to wrongfully accuse me of this crime. Therefore, I must catch the killer so that I may exonerate myself.”

“That's very interesting.” He adjusted his bulk slightly, pushing the protrusion of his belly down into his trousers. “Let me know how that goes for you.”

“I must see the murder scene.”

“You know I can't let you do that.”

“Why not? Knifing has already inspected the place for clues.”

“It's disrespectful, nonetheless, to admit passersby to a place like this, merely to satisfy their curiosity. Death is a private affair, I've always believed. I suppose I am obliged to help preserve whatever I can of the poor girl's dignity.”

I felt my face and throat flush hot with rage. I wished that I'd brought the bear. Then I became very conscious of the fact that I was armed and Angus was not. “What use have the dead for dignity?”

“What else have the dead got?” Angus said, letting a glop of emotion squish through the cracks in his absurd façade of official nonchalance.

“I need to see that body,” I said, sensing vulnerability and inching closer to the constable. “What possible harm could it do to let me in?”